Spiffy:

Iffy:

Electronic Arts set the cinema-to-console bar high with its The Lord of the Rings games. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King contained unprecedented amounts of movie footage, celebrity voice work and director participation. With The Lord of the Rings, The Third Age it turns the volume down on the cross-over appeal and aims squarely at RPG fans eager to roll the dice in Peter Jackson's version of Middle-earth.

The adventure is divided into three distinct parts, hence the old, working title The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Each act shares its climax with that of its respective film, only here players will be seeing the story from another angle. That's because The Lord of the Rings, The Third Age's characters aren't members of the Fellowship, but rather little-known folks, based on actual onscreen performers (though you'd actually be hard-pressed to spot them on your DVDs) whose adventures parallel those of Frodo and the gang.

Like most citizens of Middle-earth, your party knows nothing of the Fellowship's mission to destroy the One Ring. In fact, the first playable character, Berethor, is a Gondorian charged with following Boromir to make sure that the son of Gondor successfully returns the rediscovered magical weapon to its "rightful owners." As is common in RPGs, consequences eventually steer Berethor in a direction much different from that of his original quest. And, as usual, he eventually meets other adventurers who join his side. A Dwarf named Hadhad, Elegost the Ranger and the Elven Idrial round off the party on display at E3.

Fans of Gandalf and company need not despair, though. Your party crosses paths with characters from then films just in time for many of the trilogy's high-impact moments. You'll be able to fight along side Aragorn and Gimli at Helm's Deep and help Gandalf the Grey take a chunk out of the Balrog in Moria. No matter how hard you try, though, you won't be able to change the course of the movies. Though your party gets its fair share of blows in on the fiery beast, you will eventually part ways with the legendary opponents. Gandalf and the Balrog have a date on the mountainside and you're not invited.

Berethor and his crew still have plenty of opportunities to do smiting of their own. The second battle sequence shown at E3 pitted the good guys against a pair of Cave Trolls, one of which is outfitted with a drum. The turn-based battle system plays much like your average RPG, like Final Fantasy VII for example. One at a time you select attacks (or actions) for your characters, let the enemies have their turn, then rinse, lather and repeat. Like the aforementioned Square Enix game, The Lord of the Rings, The Third Age has melee attacks, magic (called "craft") and over-the-top creature summons. Idrial can cast "Battle Steed" which summons a watery horse (like the flood that overcomes the Nazgul in The Fellowship of the Ring) to slap enemies with a blast of H2O.

The characters move through dungeons, like the Mines of Moria, in much the same way they moved in EA's movie tie-in games. In fact, many of the locations and people bear a striking resemblance to those in their two games. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the same character models and textures from the games were carried over to this title.